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geezerbob
Guest
Of course he’s qualified. He’s 23 years old and still knows everything.
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Al_Masetti
Guest
This topic was discussed in enormous detail a year ago, just prior to the anniversary of the August bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You all might want to refer back to it.
There was tremendous discussion at the time of the decision to drop the bombs.
In summary, the key points were the huge casualties at the island hopping campaign … Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc. The fight-to-the death attitude of the Japanese. B-29’s were suffering huge losses.
Recently, it was revealed that the U.S. had decrypted Japanese communications indicating that the Japanese had figured out where we would land and that the Japanese Army had moved hundreds of thousands of troops to the landing beaches.
U.S. troops, instead of having a modest numerical superiority, would have been outnumbered and out gunned.
As a result, if the U.S. had to make contested landings on Japan, we were anticipating HUGE U.S. casualties. We had hundreds of thousands of men living aboard ship and if we didn’t do something soon, they would become fatigued and deconditioned and the landings would have to be rescheduled.
The Soviet Union was preparing to invade Japan from the east and north. So there was a race on, to make sure it was the United States that occupied Japan instead of the Soviet Union. Keep in mind that the decision-makers of the time were fully aware of the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union; the Soviets had been conquering other countries since 1917 … and their history was widely known. We didn’t want the Soviets getting their hooks into Japan as well.
Dropping the Atomic Bombs ended the war.
Afterwards we learned that the Japanese had huge stocks of suicide planes, boats, troops, etc. There were even stories that the Japanese Navy had successfully tested a nuclear device off the coast of Korea (near Wonson). (The Japanese Army nuclear program in Tokyo had been wiped out by B-29 raids.)
So there were a lot of issues and factors.
There is a huge amount of new books coming out on a monthly basis with more revelations backing up the decision.
You all might want to refer back to it.
There was tremendous discussion at the time of the decision to drop the bombs.
In summary, the key points were the huge casualties at the island hopping campaign … Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc. The fight-to-the death attitude of the Japanese. B-29’s were suffering huge losses.
Recently, it was revealed that the U.S. had decrypted Japanese communications indicating that the Japanese had figured out where we would land and that the Japanese Army had moved hundreds of thousands of troops to the landing beaches.
U.S. troops, instead of having a modest numerical superiority, would have been outnumbered and out gunned.
As a result, if the U.S. had to make contested landings on Japan, we were anticipating HUGE U.S. casualties. We had hundreds of thousands of men living aboard ship and if we didn’t do something soon, they would become fatigued and deconditioned and the landings would have to be rescheduled.
The Soviet Union was preparing to invade Japan from the east and north. So there was a race on, to make sure it was the United States that occupied Japan instead of the Soviet Union. Keep in mind that the decision-makers of the time were fully aware of the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union; the Soviets had been conquering other countries since 1917 … and their history was widely known. We didn’t want the Soviets getting their hooks into Japan as well.
Dropping the Atomic Bombs ended the war.
Afterwards we learned that the Japanese had huge stocks of suicide planes, boats, troops, etc. There were even stories that the Japanese Navy had successfully tested a nuclear device off the coast of Korea (near Wonson). (The Japanese Army nuclear program in Tokyo had been wiped out by B-29 raids.)
So there were a lot of issues and factors.
There is a huge amount of new books coming out on a monthly basis with more revelations backing up the decision.
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Blackbog
Guest
Then ignore what I have to say. It’s simple, really.
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Blackbog
Guest
Not that this exchange concerns you, but I feel I should point out that the gentleman accosting me is barely four years my elder.
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mosher
Guest
That may be true but he is correct on that singular point.
Irrelevant. One cannot directly intend an evil act to bring about a good.
Dispositions of the time do not equate to providing a clear moral picture of the issue. That would be situational ethics which is a bad way to do ethics as it relies heavily on situational and cultural norms and mores which are no basis for a true ethic.
Also, in a just war all persons of that state are morally bound to support the war effort in some way. But, just war assumes this when it says that non-combatants cannot be attacked indiscriminately. Your point, while taken, does not qualify as a valid point on this issue.
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wabrams
Guest
I have not accosted you, just pointed out yopur inconsistant statements. I shoulod also add that I was raised with a father who was a history buff and that trait got passed onto me; I love history and read as often as I can in my spare time.
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wabrams
Guest
All of this according to who? You?
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geezerbob
Guest
I’ll pose the question again: How do you separate combatants from non-combatants when you are engaged in an all out war for survival? Are combatants only the front line troops? Do you include the cooks, mechanics, quartermaster, and other rear echelon troops? How about the merchant marine, truckers, and rail workers who haul supplies? To back it up another notch or two, if you include the latter categories, it would logically follow that those engaged in the manufacture of that war material are just as vital to the effort as those who are using the material and are just as much a legitimate military target.
Call it situational ethics if you will, but if, God forbid, we are ever in such a struggle again, you will find that the instinct for survival, both individually and as a nation, is going to trump everything else. God put that instinct in us for a reason and I’m content to let Him be my judge.
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Sandi
Guest
I’ve heard that aspect of dropping the bomb discussed but just think: it took the United States dropping ***TWO ***atomic bombs on civilian cities before the Japanese surrendered. And they were warned; they knew this was coming but didn’t do anything to evacuate their people. They were as willing to immolate their own people as they were to slaughter possibly a half million troops in an invasion.
I think the United States was justified in dropping the bombs. It wasn’t a **good **thing to do; it was the lesser of two evils.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
The Japanese imperial ambition sought an Asia, the totality of whose resources and manpower would be subject to the use of Japan; something that, if it had worked, would have made Japan the most powerful nation on earth, and would have made a hell of Asia. Such was the hierarchy of Japanese society, that only the emperor could embark the nation on such an adventure, and only the emperor could end it. But such was the position of the emperor that he could not “surrender” in the normal sense of being beaten and, therefore, giving in to the “inferior” caucasian “races”, let alone the Chinese. Weirdly, though the emperor knew the war was lost, he could not surrender as a beaten god-emperor. What he could do, and the only thing he could do other than resist to the bitter end, was to “terminate” the war “to save the sacred Japanese race” from obliteration. It was only the utter destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that gave the impression of the imminent destruction of the race, and the only thing that could have done it. Thus, the emperor would not have surrendered, and could not have surrendered before the bombings, even if he knew they were in the works. (which he might have suspected). It was only after the bombings that he could claim to have saved the race.
Anyone truly interested in this subject would do well to read “Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy” by David Bergamini. It’s a long slog, but wel worth the reading. It also establishes the emperor’s guilt in the whole thing.
As an aside, I had the great good fortune once to meet a veteran of Japan’s Quantung Army. He told me what the China campaigns were like, and also the frequent visits of members of the princely class, who were directly responsible to Hirohito, and to him alone. When the soldiers saw an imperial plane land, they knew some new campaign or some new atrocity was in the offing, and never were they wrong. None of the members of his army doubted for a minute that the emperor was the architect of the war.
The Truman administration, which knew these things, knew that an incredible bloodbath would have to occur unless the emperor terminated the war personally. Millions of civilians would have had to die, rather than surrender against the wishes of the emperor. The Truman administration also knew that only an event seeming to promise the total destruction of the Japanese “race” would allow surrender to occur, as a “humanitarian” gesture on the part of the emperor.
Anyone truly interested in this subject would do well to read “Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy” by David Bergamini. It’s a long slog, but wel worth the reading. It also establishes the emperor’s guilt in the whole thing.
As an aside, I had the great good fortune once to meet a veteran of Japan’s Quantung Army. He told me what the China campaigns were like, and also the frequent visits of members of the princely class, who were directly responsible to Hirohito, and to him alone. When the soldiers saw an imperial plane land, they knew some new campaign or some new atrocity was in the offing, and never were they wrong. None of the members of his army doubted for a minute that the emperor was the architect of the war.
The Truman administration, which knew these things, knew that an incredible bloodbath would have to occur unless the emperor terminated the war personally. Millions of civilians would have had to die, rather than surrender against the wishes of the emperor. The Truman administration also knew that only an event seeming to promise the total destruction of the Japanese “race” would allow surrender to occur, as a “humanitarian” gesture on the part of the emperor.
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corvidae
Guest
I know I have hindsight, and at the time I probably would have considered the bombs a good thing. My point is, we told them we would only accept unconditional surrender, and then at the end, we let them have conditions. Why? Why not just say you can have conditions and end the war.God forbid we try to have an unconditional surrender so they couldn’t restart their war machine. I guess with hindsight being 20/20, a couple of more Nanking’s wouldn’t be so bad if we had just given the Japanese what they wanted?
As far as the two bombs being dropped, I believe there was not much time for the Japanese to realize what had happened after the first atomic bomb. I mean, nothing happened like this before, it was a city gone, not burnt, not bombed in any normal sense, but gone. Would you react by immediately giving up, or would you react with disbelief.
I know it sounds I am just defending the Japanese here, I am not. I believe that the bombs helped prevent casulties on both sides. I also believe with the times mindset, I would have supported the bombs. With hindsight, and with what I consider a better mindset, I do not.
A lone Raven
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Traditional_Ang
Guest
Geezerbob:
Until they died during the last few years, I was privileged to know several survivors of the Bataan Death March, including one who carried his “buddy” for the last half of the “March” like one of the sacks of mail he carried before WW II in San Francisco as a Mailman while his “buddies” formed a phalanx so the Japanese wouldn’t see them and “use them for bayonet drill” (the man who told me about this was the man who was carried as the sack of mail, the other, who died last year, only talked about it during the last years of his life). If the bombs had not been dropped, I wouldn’t have met any of them, as the Japanese Imperial Army had given orders that, in the event of the invasion of Japan, all of the POW’s in Japan’s custody were to be executed.
Since the Japanese starved and executed so many of them while using others in Bio-warfare experiments, I have no doubts those orders would have been carried out.
And, if the papers unearthed in the book listed below are correct, Japan detonated its own Aotmic bomb on August 12,1945.
Japan’s Secret War (JAPAN’S RACE AGAINST TIME TO BUILD ITS OWN ATOMIC BOMB), Wilcox, Robert K. (1995, Marlowe and Company)
If not for the shock of the two atomic bombings, the realization that we had more, and the realization that they couldn’t get theirs airborne, the USA would have been hit with an atomic bomb. Picture the Hollywood sign as background to a scene that looks like Hiroshima looked and you have the idea.
The Japanese had already used biological weapons on the Chinese, and were working on packaging the same weapons (Bubonic Plague Bombs that had been dropped on the Chinese) so they would survive the trip to America. Those who remember the anthrax scare should have a good idea of the terror Bubonic Plague would have caused if it would have hit and spread along several cities and towns in the Pacific Northwest.
At the same time, the Japanese were building jet and Rocket planes to be used as Kamikazis and storing them in caves. If we would have invaded Japan, these would have been aimed at our fleet by the hundreds, and they would have gotten through, given Japan more time to figure out how to get their Plague Bombs, and possibly their atomic bomb, over here.
This above information was what was on Truman’s desk according to the latest declassified papers
What do you think would have happened if Truman had not dropped ours because of the moral qualms expressed here, and then Japanese would first have inflicted Bubonic Plague on us and then dropped their own atomic bomb on us after annihilating most of our fleet in a Kamikazi blitz? What do you think would have happened to those who were “Prisoners of the Japanese” had we not drpped the bombs?
If all these things did happen, including the slaughter of the POW’s and the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Los Angeles, what do you think we would have done with ALL the Atomic Bombs in our inventory?
People forget the Japanese weren’t just sitting there waiting to be invaded. They were “fighting back”, and their way of fighting back was pretty nasty.
Your Brother in Christ, Michael
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Al_Masetti
Guest
Please, everyone, keep in mind what war really is.
Basically, it’s a fight to the death between two nations or groups of nations.
It’s not some polite contest with an agreed upon ending date.
It’s fine to debate morality more than half a century later when you are well fed and not conscripted and not being trained to be cannon fodder. Much later, someone came up with the term “limited war”. Well, war isn’t limited.
Until mid/late 1943, the United States really didn’t know who would win World War II. In Europe, Germany was marching all over the place. If Germany had been successful in North Africa, for example, then the Normandy invasion in 1944 might never have taken place. The Arab League was aligned with Germany and could have given Germany control over the whole of the Mediterranean. If the Vichy French government had been successful in retaining control over the French Navy instead of the Brits taking it out, then the Med would have been lost.
Whenever the Germans changed their codes, the war against the U-Boats faltered. If the Germans had been more aggressive, they would have won the Battle of the Atlantic. Their newer U-Boats were incredibly superior machines. But they were introduced too late.
German fighters were decimating U.S. and British bombers ove Germany. If Hitler had deployed the ME-262 fighter a little sooner, the German Air Force would have prevented the invasion at Normandy.
And, after we landed about a milion men in Europe, we were taking huge casualties. On another thread someone wrote that our maximum casualties were in April of 1945. It just didn’t stop when we KNEW we would win; we had to actually WIN … defeat the enemy on the battlefield. The enemty simply was not going to quit.
The Pacific War was going very slowly and we were taking all kinds of casualties. The U.S. had to contend with HUGE distances in the Pacific. The Japanese strategy was to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the U.S. Navy with suicide planes. They were very successful with that strategy; it caused delay. If they had delayed the war a few more months then we would have been into the winter of 1945-46 and the Japanese might have been able to cause us even more casualties and we knew that and couldn’t allow the war to last that long.
The delays would have caused us to use even more desperate measures to end the war. The Japanese had no interest in negotiating. They had even designed a new class of submarines that was decades ahead of the U.S.
It was a very bad time. Far, far worse than what we can imagine now.
No one had any idea of what would work and what would not. There was bureaucracy and improvisation. Everyone was simply fighting and fighting and fighting.
If we didn’t win, we would lose. And losing would mean being cut off from the world and then starved out.
Basically, it’s a fight to the death between two nations or groups of nations.
It’s not some polite contest with an agreed upon ending date.
It’s fine to debate morality more than half a century later when you are well fed and not conscripted and not being trained to be cannon fodder. Much later, someone came up with the term “limited war”. Well, war isn’t limited.
Until mid/late 1943, the United States really didn’t know who would win World War II. In Europe, Germany was marching all over the place. If Germany had been successful in North Africa, for example, then the Normandy invasion in 1944 might never have taken place. The Arab League was aligned with Germany and could have given Germany control over the whole of the Mediterranean. If the Vichy French government had been successful in retaining control over the French Navy instead of the Brits taking it out, then the Med would have been lost.
Whenever the Germans changed their codes, the war against the U-Boats faltered. If the Germans had been more aggressive, they would have won the Battle of the Atlantic. Their newer U-Boats were incredibly superior machines. But they were introduced too late.
German fighters were decimating U.S. and British bombers ove Germany. If Hitler had deployed the ME-262 fighter a little sooner, the German Air Force would have prevented the invasion at Normandy.
And, after we landed about a milion men in Europe, we were taking huge casualties. On another thread someone wrote that our maximum casualties were in April of 1945. It just didn’t stop when we KNEW we would win; we had to actually WIN … defeat the enemy on the battlefield. The enemty simply was not going to quit.
The Pacific War was going very slowly and we were taking all kinds of casualties. The U.S. had to contend with HUGE distances in the Pacific. The Japanese strategy was to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the U.S. Navy with suicide planes. They were very successful with that strategy; it caused delay. If they had delayed the war a few more months then we would have been into the winter of 1945-46 and the Japanese might have been able to cause us even more casualties and we knew that and couldn’t allow the war to last that long.
The delays would have caused us to use even more desperate measures to end the war. The Japanese had no interest in negotiating. They had even designed a new class of submarines that was decades ahead of the U.S.
It was a very bad time. Far, far worse than what we can imagine now.
No one had any idea of what would work and what would not. There was bureaucracy and improvisation. Everyone was simply fighting and fighting and fighting.
If we didn’t win, we would lose. And losing would mean being cut off from the world and then starved out.
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mosher
Guest
Yes, and it is the position of the Church on these issues. And while this statement is an appeal to authority I do not feel that it is out of place because your comment is not an argument to the substance of my statements so I am not obliged to refute it.
It has been clearly defined and well worked through in the Geneva Conventions which took into account Just War when it was drawn. In the Conventions we see a very practical application of Just War especially in the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. There are some on the Battle field that it is not ethical to attack for instance, those who are unarmed, chaplains and medics. Also, civilians, while they may be supporting the war effort are not direct combatants and are thus shielded from being treated as combatants. However, a combatant has an obligation to distinguish himself as such or else he does not have the protection of the Conventions. In short once you begin to deliberately attack those who are not armed combatants you are outside of moral behavior.
This is not always the case. Sometimes conflicts arise that are not bent on mutual destruction. In fact most are not in the modern field of war. Rather, it is usually more surgical than that as we have seen in such conflicts as Afghanistan and Iraq.
But it is in practice and it must be to be ethically waged. A nation cannot use a disproportionate amount of force. For this reason even we have done so in the most recent conflicts taking care to only use necessary force. Some may claim that this is an error but those who would say this are not properly formed in the knowledge of ethics in particular in the ethics of war.
While I cannot argue with your treatment of the historical turmoil that existed during the conflict I have to say that it is irrelevant to the treatment of Just War doctrine. The obligation of a nation in waging a just war must find a way to win within the confines that exist in the objective moral principles. To act otherwise is just that, immoral. See, what I think is not being understood at this point is that the principles of Just War are designed to transcend and indeed do transcend the situation of the particular conflict/war. This is the very definition of objective morality which finds its source in the Natural Moral Law and as such cannot be circumvented for any reason. The basic principle is that no matter what, under no circumstances can an evil act be directly intended even if that act will bring about a proximate or remote good, i.e., the ends do not justify the means.
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wabrams
Guest
Put your money where your mouth is and show us where the Church condemns it.
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EBSSTF4
Guest
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Blackbog
Guest
Hiroshima, Nagasaki Represent “Crimes,” Pope (JP II) Says
Was Hiroshima and Nagasaki a Sin?
Catholic Answers: Just War Doctrine
"…Even with the smartest of smart munitions, it is not possible to ensure that no non-combatants will be harmed in wartime. As tragic as it is, collateral damage to innocents is an inescapable consequence of war. Catholic theology recognizes this. It applies to such situations a well-established principle known as the law of double-effect. According to this law it is permissible to undertake an action which has two effects, one good and one evil, provided that certain conditions are met.
Although these conditions can be formulated in different ways, they may be enumerated as follows: (1) the action itself must not be intrinsically evil; (2) the evil effect must not be an end in itself or a means to accomplishing the good effect (in other words, it must be a foreseen but undesired side-effect of the action); and (3) the evil effect must not outweigh the good effect. If these three conditions are met, the action may be taken in spite of the foreseen damage it will do.
The law of double-effect would not have applied to the cases of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. In these situations though the act (dropping bombs) was not intrinsically evil and though it is arguable that in the long run more lives were saved than lost, the second condition was violated because the death of innocents was used as a means to achieve the good of the war’s end."
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wabrams
Guest
I agree with you in regards to Dresden, but I don’t with regards to Japan. In both cities, the primary targets were military. The death of civilians was, unfortunately, collateral damage.
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dch1983
Guest
I find it interesting that so many Catholics support the current conflict in Iraq as a moral and “just” application of war (a statement which I think is at the very least questionable) but regard the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan as truly and clearly immoral. While the two are very different scenarios, I find it peculiar that the Church condemns completely the dropping of the bombs, seemingly discrediting whether or not Truman had the best interest of his people in mind, as leader of the state. Intention does not equal innocence, I know. I don’t want to change the direction of this string to much, but what is the RCC’s position on the war in Iraq? Please feel free to direct me elsewhere so this string does not divert from topic completely… Thanks.
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